Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to start my comments on this long-awaited bill before the House tonight, the Radiocommunications Legislation Amendment (Reform and Modernisation) Bill 2020, by acknowledging the contribution of the member for Macnamara and providing a shout-out to that outstanding community television show that he referred to earlier, The Shtickan institution of the Melbourne Jewish community that I've had the privilege to appear on. As the member for Macnamara pointed out, it's a salient reminder to us that, in any debate about communications policy or technology policy, the reason we're really here relates to what these technologies, these infrastructures, can do to enable human-to-human interaction and to enable the communities we all serve here today.

As I was saying, I'm delighted to be able to speak on this long-awaited bill. Spectrum policy is a real passion of mine. It's the geekiest part of communications policy. It's where the pointiest heads of economics get together with the pointiest heads of physics and the pointiest heads of network engineering, and they all make something so impossibly complex but so incredibly important to our modern society. In a previous life I had the privilege of working on spectrum policy in the commercial sector, and I can tell you that the combinatorial clock spectrum auction model is an outstanding conversational topic for any situation; I recommend it to all members in the chamber for first dates! It goes really well—some really engaging material.

Spectrum policy is complex, but it's consequential; it's crucial. Radiofrequency radcoms spectrum management is like land title management for a new settlement. With the rapid pace of change in the communications sector you could think of radcoms spectrum management as being like a land title system during a gold rush: rapidly changing and asking: 'How do we establish the rules of conduct in a land grab? What are the rules of the road so that the radcoms spectrum used by a microwave doesn't interfere with your television reception and doesn't stop you from being able to watch The Shtick on community television in Melbourne? What are the rules of the road to make sure that your garage door opener doesn't interfere with your wi-fi router or that Telstra's 5G mobile network doesn't interfere with Optus's 5G network?'

We don't want radcoms spectrum management to be like a 21st century Deadwood, with device manufacturers operating like modern-day Al Swearengens. In that gold-rush, no-rules, winner-takes-all scenario, you really want to have government setting the rules of the road. It's not a free-for-all in Australia. For some time now, we've had rules to grant exclusive licences to some and to provide rules for management of shared spectrum spaces for others. But the current framework is nearly 30 years old, and we can always manage spectrum more efficiently. New technologies enable new uses and new ways of sharing and utilising spectrum. So we do need the regulatory framework for spectrum management to evolve with the times to incorporate these new potential uses, and that's what the bill before the House is about.

The bill before the House is a response to these changes in the technological landscape and seeks to modernise the policy and regulatory framework by adding flexibility and offering regulatory streamlining and efficiency. It goes to a range of aspects of spectrum management. The objects of the act are clarified, and the respective roles of the minister and the ACMA in spectrum management are clarified. There are changes streamlining the allocation and reallocation processes for spectrum management of licence types, equipment supply regulation, and compliance and enforcement.

As I said earlier, Labor broadly supports these changes because they are the result of very significant consultation with stakeholders in the sector. I, and Labor, want to acknowledge the industry stakeholders that have participated in many round tables, meetings, consultations and rounds of submissions at considerable time and cost. I also want to recognise the public servants and the employees at the regulators who have been working to settle the reforms in this complex area for years—in fact, for many years. By this stage, the Morrison government's habit of being there for the photo op, but not being there for the follow-up, is well-established. Ironically for a bill about streamlining and increasing the efficiency of regulation, the process of bringing this bill to the House today has been utterly shambolic. It's a shambolic policymaking process that we have seen across the communications portfolio since this minister took on the job, but this bill does stand out for the dithering and squibbing of big decisions over time. The communications portfolio is supposed to be where you find the cutting-edge technology. But the infrastructure that gets the most work in the current communication minister's office are the bookshelves heaving with neglected and ignored regulatory reviews, waiting for a government response and action. They're slower than the 14.4 kilobits-per-second fax modem that I begged my father to connect in 1995. There's perhaps no better example of this dithering and slow movement in policymaking than the bill before the House.

This is a bill whose genesis can be traced to the Turnbull era. No, not the Turnbull prime ministership, but the former member for Wentworth's stint as communications minister in 2014. Malcolm Turnbull, as communications minister, initiated the review process that is the source for the reforms in this bill before the House in May 2014. The then Department of Communications and the ACMA handed the product of this spectrum review to the minister in March 2015. The government agreed to all of the recommendations of this report and set itself an ambitious timetable to implement the recommendations over the next two years—an ambitious implementation target that they then proceeded to miss by three years. In the time that we have spent waiting for the report and the response to the spectrum review to be implemented by this government, we've seen three prime ministers. We've seen Malcolm Turnbull moved on from being the communications minister to become the Prime Minister, to then being deposed as the Prime Minister, to resigning from the parliament altogether. We've seen the entirety of the rise and fall of Donald Trump as US president while this bill inched its way through the bureaucracy of the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments. Well, almost. We're nearly there.

The government department that undertook the original review, jointly with the ACMA, the Department of Communications, is no more. It's been absorbed into the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications. Political careers have started and ended. Bureaucracies have risen and fallen in the time that it has taken this bill to reach this chamber. And this in one of the fastest moving areas of policy that we confront as legislators. There are real-world consequences for this laggard action. Spectrum auctions are being conducted without the benefit of the streamlining and efficiencies to the regulatory framework outlined in this bill. It's no way to make policy. But it's the policy process—and I use the term fairly loosely—that we've come to expect from this government, particularly in the communications portfolio.

We saw another extraordinary example of the shambolic policymaking process in communications policy in this country earlier this week with the passage of the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Regional Commercial Radio and Other Measures) Bill that the minister took through this chamber, finally. It wasn't the contents of that bill that were extraordinary; the bill represented relatively minor, though desperately needed, regulatory relief for regional media outlets. Labor was happy to support those measures and to facilitate the expeditious passage of that bill through the parliament. However, what was extraordinary was the process that preceded that bill's passage through this House. The fact that the bill was necessary at all was extraordinary. In September 2017, Malcolm Turnbull released a series of changes to media laws addressing the very issues dealt with by the broadcasting services amendment bill which he described as 'a new era for Australia's media'. He boasted:

The government is strengthening Australia's media industry, enhancing media diversity and securing local journalism jobs, particularly in regional areas.

Unfortunately, this new era for Australia's media, particularly in regional areas, lasted only three years. Less than three years later, the explanatory memorandum for the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Regional Commercial Radio and Other Measures) Bill 2020 stated:

The Department is of the view that broadcasters' difficulties in meeting content requirements can be taken to be an early warning sign of market failure.

The Australian Financial Review summed it up with the headline, 'Regional TV on the verge of market failure'—market failures that would limit regional Australians' access to Australian content and entirely unaddressed by the new era of regulation proclaimed by the Turnbull reforms of three years earlier. In the face of that market failure, however, the government dithered and then tinkered around the regulatory edges, proposing a bill that represented much-needed but modest regulatory relief for regional operators.

What followed the drafting of this bill—which was of modest regulatory relief, uncontroversial, and neither challenged nor impeded by the opposition—was one of the most bizarre parliamentary processes that any bill has seen in this House for quite some time. First we saw a crazy rush—a headlong crash-through. The bill was brought on for debate just days after it was introduced, in the June sitting. It was such a rush that the government guillotined debate on the previous bill without allowing a single opposition speaker, in an extraordinary trashing of parliamentary convention, bringing the bill to debate at a headlong speed. You might conclude there was a speedy passage through the House. It was not to be. Despite the rush, the government then proceeded to do nothing. The bill was listed on the Notice Paper for debate in the next five consecutive sittings, and nothing happened. Those of us on this side of the House who are interested in these things were left watching, sitting day after sitting day, wondering: 'When will the bill get its day in the sun? Will it be this sitting week or the next?' It was quite bizarre. More significantly, industry stakeholders who were relying on this regulatory relief were also left waiting and wondering. Just as stakeholders in the radcom spectrum bill currently before the House have been left waiting and wondering for years and years.

Stakeholders for the broadcasting services amendment were kept waiting until this week—five months after the chaotic introduction of the bill into this House. I'm sure even the minister's own department was incredibly frustrated at being left wondering just when they would be able to get to work on implementing the bill. We know that those opposite feel that, once the photo-op is done, once the media release is released, once the doorstop is held, it's job done. They're not there for the follow-up; they're not there for the implementation. We have seen time and time again that this government are simply not interested in getting the detail right. This bill before us in the House has been more than five years in the making. It's gone to the bottom of the to-do pile of multiple communication ministers in the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government—a really crowded place to be. And, when they finally did get around to doing it, the bill was hurriedly introduced. This is a government that talks the talk on spectrum reform but doesn't walk the walk. We find, when we get into the detail, that the government hasn't dotted their i's and crossed their t's. They haven't listened to the expert on what this reform could be, and should be, with a bit of extra gumption.

I want to particularly highlight the missed opportunity in the area of 5G that the member for Greenway has highlighted in the second reading amendment before the House. As the member for Greenway has noted, Labor appreciates the need to get spectrum reform right. We understand the costs and complexity of failing to strike the right balance between flexibility and certainty when it comes to spectrum management. The missed opportunity to get 5G right in this bill has been particularly concerning. My colleague, the member for Greenway, noted that this was addressed by Professor Jock Given and Mr Giles Tanner—who are quite august figures in this policy space—in their submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts' inquiry into the deployment, adoption and application of 5G in Australia. These guys are the experts. They highlighted the shortcomings in the bill that is before the House and the effects that this missed opportunity might have on the rollout of 5G. The rollout of 5G matters—particularly given the way the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government has bungled the NBN. Given and Tanner made this recommendation:

The ACMA's power to re-issue spectrum licences in the public interest and the Minister's power to make class of services determinations should be reviewed …

So the fact that this bill doesn't address that recommendation is particularly concerning.

Labor understands the importance of getting spectrum reform right. Its value to the Australian economy is estimated at $177 billion over 15 years. It underpins many of the areas of ICT policy that are so crucial to so much of our internet-connected economy today. We know it's a complex area of policy, and failing to strike the right balance between flexibility and certainty on spectrum management is costly. It's an unseen cost, it's an inefficiency in the background of our day-to-day economy, but it's there and we all pay the price. The lack of follow-through from the government on the broadcasting services bill has left regional media in crisis and has deepened the underlying trends that that bill had purported to address. That's why it's disappointing that the government has failed to be across the detail. The work has been done everywhere but in the bill. The industry deserves better—a more expeditious, more streamlined and more efficient communications policymaking process—and all Australians deserve better. A future Albanese government will deliver that for the benefit of all Australians.

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